Facing the Tank

by Patrick Gale

  Lydia led the way up the steps towards the east end, where she had seen a friend. Clive lingered by a noticeboard to see what the choir would be singing at Evensong for the rest of the week. Sometimes it was possible to slip over during a gap in his afternoon’s teaching. He didn’t always bother to tell Lydia about these trips. In fact it was so long since he had done so that he feared it might look suspicious if he suddenly started telling her again. She seemed to regard church-going as a showy, diplomatic, distinctly female affair; certainly not for men of pre-retirement age to ‘get into’. When she suggested he accompany her, she expected him to sigh as if he had something more manly and important on his mind, so he did. He followed her more slowly, watching her talk to the unfamiliar friend. She was wearing her new spring coat, a light creamy cashmere which hid her bum but showed off her legs. It looked expensive, but that was usually the desired effect. She made so much more money from her books and shop than he ever could from teaching that she tended to buy him clothes rather than he her.

  Like the Bishop, Lydia was a 1970s success story. When they had met, Clive was the ambitious one and she the adoring mouse. He had had his first play accepted by the BBC and had had a second commissioned by the Royal Court. He was a fashionable go-getter with a fashionably seedy address and fashionably black Chelsea boots. She had just finished at secretarial college and was in her first year at cookery school. They got married because simply everybody was living in sin so it seemed more daring to run to a register office then toast their joint future in a Portobello Road pub. Then she had produced a son and everything had changed.

  He would say ‘went wrong’ but it had not been like that. When even the Royal Court regulars were staying away in droves from his third play and when, in the same month, the cookery book she had written on the sly was becoming a bestseller, he had coped remarkably well. By and large he had not had to cope, in fact, because she had managed him so cleverly. They became the perfect late-Sixties couple; she writing witty guides on how to live cheerfully well on Nothing At All (second bestseller) and he, one of those faces which everyone recognized but nobody could quite place. As she made more money and gained more confidence, she found in him the perfect Seventies husband; a complaisant drone, hairy and supportive. She persuaded him to grow a beard and take a teaching post in an ancient public school. They were getting tired of living in a gentrified slum and suddenly it was oh so chic to discover the countryside again.

  ‘Welcome to the Earthly Paradise,’ their new neighbours had said.

  Nothing had gone wrong. When chauvinist friends of either sex sneered that he had opted out and been emasculated by a distaff cash flow, he retorted that they were the ones who had opted out by not daring to bare their innate passivity. Lydia and he had found their levels. He liked being underneath. She turned and smiled as he approached. The beard had gone recently; she had said he would look younger without it, and he did. He took her hand discreetly and they found seats in the sixth row.

  The Patron’s chapel filled fast. People soon forgot that they were light-headed from lack of sleep or breakfast and before long there was much twisting in seats and nodding to friends. It felt more like a fire practice than the preliminary to a service; the occasion was altogether strange. Sam had been joined by another verger, Mrs Moore, who was helping him to lay out extra chairs outside the chapel door to accommodate the overflow. Lydia finished the difficult bit where one had to kneel and compose one’s thoughts and sat up in her chair to see who had come.

  Mrs Chattock, Gavin Tree’s mother (twice widowed, poor woman) drifted to the front where her son would be waiting for her. She had grown increasingly otherworldly since her minor stroke last autumn and was purportedly cultivating a mystic circle. A spectral smile, doubtless learnt in her days as Coward’s Elvira in northern rep, conveyed her serene greetings to all as she advanced, but forbade any from being so fleshly as to do more than bow in return. Fergus Gibson had taken a seat in a darkish corner as usual. His partner in the city’s only interior design business had died suddenly some months ago and Lydia knew he was having a terrible time with his old mother. The latter had got religion on the death of her husband and rushed off to darkest Africa to become a missionary. Illness had forced her home and into her son’s care. It was said that she was quite seriously unhinged. Poor Fergus. Lydia tried to catch his eye but he was looking sad and preoccupied, which was scarcely surprising. Mrs Delaney-Siedentrop had said something awfully tactless to him last week. Lydia made a mental note to buy something special for when he came to supper with darling Emma Dyce-Hamilton. Funny little Emma was just the right age for him. The Delaney-Siedentrop had secured a front seat as usual through the agency of her ex-stockbroker husband St John who was a sidesman and wore his medals rather too often. She was wearing one of her habitual navy blue suits and had just beckoned Mercy Merluza over to join her on a spare seat. Mrs Merluza was a once-luscious Spaniard who would not have looked out of place in an Italian toga epic of the Fifties. One of Barrowcester’s few exotica, she ran a craft shop, a disappointingly tame occupation given her striking appearance, Lydia and Clive had asked her for drinks occasionally when she first arrived but had found her hopelessly narrow-minded and dull. Clive finished composing his thoughts and sat back in the chair to Lydia’s right. She smiled encouragingly at him then looked across to bow to peculiar Dr Morton who had just found a seat.

  Early morning sunlight was pointing out the cobwebs on the eastern windows that were so soon to be dismantled and cleaned. The poplars outside waved, clattering, and caused the light to dance on faces and over stone. Behind the congregation, in the quire, the organ brought whatever it had been playing to an end. There was a pause and then the choristers burst into plainsong somewhere nearby. The combination of the white flower arrangements, the brilliant sunshine and their high voices that scalded the still air and wobbled slightly because they were processing, made Lydia want to cry, so she laid her right hand on the back of Clive’s left and squeezed. He caught her eye and smiled. Sweet Clive! Accessible Clive! She wished their son Tobit were here so that she could be the filling in a love sandwich.

  Gavin Tree had spoken of love last time she heard him preach. A wise and principled man. Apparently his sermon at Saturday’s confirmation service was an outrage to some. She had been working at the time but the reported gist of it struck her as extremely sensible. She was as guilty as the next person of overindulging in prettiness and sentiment – angels, flowers and choristers – but at least she was aware of doing so and felt the shame of it. Someone had given her Gavin’s book for Christmas two years ago. She had still to read it.

  The choristers drew near. Sam marched in with his staff, leading the Dean and, behind him, Canon Wedlake who had such a noble profile, and behind him the choristers. The Dean and Canon Wedlake took up stations to either side of the Patron’s tomb and the choristers passed them in two lines to form a semi-circle that met behind the altar. Sam’s arrival in the chapel doorway started a wave of rising congregation so that by the time the choristers were filing round the apse, everyone was on their feet.

  ‘Dearly beloved,’ began the Dean, ‘welcome.’

  The service that followed was remembered by all present as having been pertinent and tasteful but it was so eclipsed by the raising of the sarcophagus lid that the remembrance was hazy at best. After a hymn, a brief address by the Dean reminding the few strangers present of St Boniface’s history and a briefer summary by Canon Wedlake of the enormity of the task lying in store for the cathedral masons, there were some prayers and then everyone stood again for the start of the disinterment. The choristers sang a suitably medieval psalm setting and the Dean laid hands on the winch chain and began to pull.

  There was an unrestrained craning of necks as the lid rose the first five inches. Several service sheets fluttered irreverently to the flagstones from fingers parted with excitement. Dr Morton stood on his hassock and his peculiar beady-eyed face, which had always reminded Lydia of an
ostrich’s, rose above the crowd, hungry for view. Clive froze in the middle of unwrapping a throat pastille, apparently aware that he was rustling too loudly, and Lydia felt a sudden extraordinary temptation to climb on to her chair. There was then a slight threat of anti-climax. Everyone realized that from where they were placed it was impossible to see inside the tomb and that the prospect of one’s Dean hauling a slab of pre-Norman stone into the air on a winch teetered on the dull side of inspiring. Then two things happened extremely fast. Five small birds like canaries, only white, flew at great speed from under the lid and disappeared into the quire. More obviously the Bishop groaned and fell in a dead faint. Gavin Tree was a tall man and his fall put two chairs and the Dean’s wife off their balance and gathered a rush of helpful hands and counsel. As Sam, the Dean and a man Lydia did not know helped to carry him out, pursued by a still otherworldly Mrs Chattock and an undisciplined gaggle of choristers, it became clear both that the service was considered thoroughly finished and that not everyone had seen the apparition of the white birds. Clive had not for a start, but he had notoriously slow reactions so he took it on trust from Lydia, who had seen. Mrs Delaney-Siedentrop certainly had not, and was making increasingly unsubtle references to popery and cheap stagecraft. The scene was like a re-enactment of the one at Babel. Those who had seen pointed for the benefit of their less fortunate neighbours and made gliding motions with their hands. Those who had not, scoffed and indicated the weight of the lid while muttering about oxygen. Gradually the crowd dispersed, having waited for the news that the poor Bishop was well on the way to recovery, and the Scottish Masons began to move in. There was a small scuffle amongst the local radio crew when it transpired that their smuggled video camera had jammed at the crucial moment.

  Over the days that followed there was a marked increase in the ranks of Those Who Had Seen – the party that was tasting the sweet tang of autobeatification. Soon the less fortunate party came to number only three; Clive, who none the less counted himself as a believer, Mrs Delaney-Siedentrop, who most certainly did not, and Fergus Gibson, who had suddenly had a bad feeling about his mother and had left the service during the Dean’s brief address.

  8

  ‘Mother?’

  Fergus stood in the doorway of Lilias Gibson’s room. The old woman was slumped sideways against her pillows. Between her dashingly military wedding photograph and a silver-framed one of her adopted Nigerian chiefling, the early morning tea he had brought her before leaving remained untouched.

  ‘Mother? Are you asleep?’

  Fergus advanced to the bedstead. A huge round mirror on the wall to stage left of her bed reflected the touching scene; rapidly greying interior designer peering concerned at snow-white, unconscious ex-missionary.

  ‘Mother?’

  Still she lay, her head dangling in mid-air. Her hair, still brushed out for the night, formed a lacquer-stiffened cloud around her tiny skull. The draught through the open door caused it to drift slightly. Its whiteness and that of the pillows made her ancient skin seem a warm, toffee brown.

  ‘Please no. Mother?’ He reached out and touched her neck with his fingertips. The skin was still warm. ‘Mother!’ he shouted. He took her firmly by the shoulders and swung her into a more dignified vertical, pulling the pillows around her to hold her in place. Even with her shoulders upright, her head continued to loll drunkenly. He pressed his ear to where he thought her heart should be. Nothing. He moved his head. Nothing. He didn’t bother with a pulse. He could never find those anyway. ‘Oh Ma,’ he said quietly and sat on the side of the bed.

  He wondered what he should do now. Dr Morton had been in the Patron’s chapel so it was pointless to call him out yet. There was no hurry now. What did one do with a dead mother? What did one do with a dead anybody? He had been so firm about politely refusing offers of help from Mrs Moore, Lydia Hart and co. that he could hardly call them in now, at the grisly last. It was difficult to picture Lydia having anything to do with a corpse.

  Oh Mother. You’ve become a corpse.

  Fergus’s eye turned across the room he had prepared for her before he met her flight from Lagos in November. Her photographs, some on the table, some on the mantelshelf. Her Bible, of course, sun-baked from the new widow’s proselytizing trips into the African bush. The wardrobe full of long-outdated winter clothes he had had sent down from Inverness for her. He had unpacked them so carefully and she had never been well enough to get up and wear them again. The mirror and the bed, placed so that she could see the Cathedral, in reflection, from her pillows. In her brief hours of sanity she had lain there identifying the silhouettes of birds flying around its twin towers. Her Guide to British Birds, signed by her friend the author, lay on the carpet beside her brown corduroy slippers and the WI Book.

  Brightening, Fergus bent down and took up the latter. Ever since she married his father at eighteen and left her native Dundee for his family’s farm near Inverness, she had made a collection of recipes, advice pages, natural remedies and nursing hints and glued them into this great black volume. She called it the W I Book because the original idea, and many of the pamphlets, came from the Women’s Institute to which the young and inexperienced Mrs Gibson was introduced by dour Mrs Gibson senior. Over the years, for son as much as mother, the black tome had come to represent security in crisis. When he had a toothache or had cut his knee or was simply feeling low, he had only to reach for the W I Book. It had helped when Granny Gibson was bitten by an adder, it would help now.

  Fergus opened the book on his lap and turned to the back pages where, in her flawless antiquated copperplate, his mother had kept an index of everything she pasted in. He turned to D for death and O for old, without success. Then his eye landed on L and found an entry under Last Offices – page 75. Seventy-five was early on in the collection. The black-bordered pamphlet must have been given to her when her father-in-law died of a heart attack. Fergus read.

  ‘The first action should be to remove any hot-water bottles from the bed and all pillows bar one.’ He pulled her hot-water bottle out and emptied the tepid water into her bedroom basin. Then, holding her shrunken shoulders out of the way, he removed all pillows bar one and laid her gently back on that. Her mouth fell open and he tried in vain to close it. Clicking his tongue he returned to the book and read on, hoping for advice about mouths. ‘Close the eyelids with wet cotton wool if possible and straighten the limbs. Clean and replace any dentures, tucking a pillow firmly under the lower jaw until mouth can remain closed of its own accord.’ So. Her false teeth were still soaking by the sink. He had had plenty of practice at taking those in and out for her over the last months, and was no longer squeamish. Fergus took a pillow from the floor, after dealing with the teeth, and tucked it firmly under the jaw. The corpse was less alarming with a shut mouth. ‘Cover the face with the sheet,’ the sage wives advised none the less, ‘and prepare all requirements for the final laying-out. While doing this it is advisable to find out the relatives’ wishes regarding any personal jewellery such as the wedding ring.’ There was a list of ‘requirements’ such as towels, soap and hot water, all of which were to hand. Jewellery, he assumed, had all been left to her fertile Scottish nieces. ‘Remove remaining bedclothes leaving top sheet to cover.’

  He pulled off the quilt and draped it over the landing banisters to air before starting to untuck the blankets. God bless the W I. It was like having a capable nurse in the room; starchy but comforting because her knowledge was absolute and so bore one up.

  Her body beneath the lone white sheet was slight as an old cat’s. He had grown used to it after countless bed baths but, suddenly so still, it seemed frailer than ever. He was not going to cry. She had been dying too long. She had been so unlike herself for so long that the corpse before him was not her. She had been mercifully removed from all these indignities some time before she left Lagos.

  Christmas had been when the lavatorial obsession had set in. No sooner did Dr Morton declare her physically well at Easter th
an she started her refusal to leave the bed even to hobble on his arm to the bathroom. Easter also saw her lapse into a hateful second infancy. She must have been a horrible baby. It was only when Lydia had kindly had words with Dr Morton behind Fergus’ back that the latter had discreetly delivered a large box of disposable nappies for the elderly and infirm.

  No. He was not going to cry. He did need to blow his nose, however. His hands shook and he dropped the handkerchief. As he stooped to pick it up, his head level with the mattress, Mrs Gibson let fly a long and expressive fart and proceeded to laugh uproariously from under her white sheet. Fergus watched her mouth opening and closing on the cotton, then pulled back her shroud and saw the monstrous glee in her eyes.

  ‘Devil!’ he shouted, pulling the pillow from under her jaw and preparing to hit her with it. She only laughed the louder, dribbling and farting some more, so instead he tucked it back behind her shoulders and unrolled the blankets over her again. With her giggling in his ears, he worked his way along both sides of the mattress, tucking the bedding back in and making perfect hospital corners, then walked out and shut the door. Slumped on the landing floor and pulling her quilt off the banisters and over his head, he tried to cry.

  9

  ‘Faster!’ yelled Gloire. The air poured over the windscreen and into her artfully straightened mane. ‘Faster for Chrissakes!’ Tobit Hart flattened the accelerator as her brown hand clamped harder on his inner thigh. ‘Faster. Oh. Oh God! Yes. Please. Now!’ As the engine neared apoplexy Tobit blared the horn for a full eight seconds as his fiancée subsided in vanilla-scented ecstasy beside him. ‘I love you when you drive,’ she confessed at last.